Inspector General (IG) John Roth described the improper favoritism shown to several Democrats including the brother of Hillary Clinton, Sen. Harry Reid, and Virginian Gov. Terry McAuliffe, the former Democratic National Committee chairman during the Clinton administration.

The former governor and Hayes showed up at the Knott Landfill southeast of Bend in a pickup and an SUV about 2 p.m. last Friday and spent a few minutes dumping trash, according to Timm Schimke, the director of the Deschutes County Solid Waste Department….

(W)orkers recognized who they were dealing with and apparently decided the dumping might be of interest to law enforcement. Kitzhaber and Hayes are targets of a federal investigation.

Positively translucent. And of course this is as much a federal government problem as it is an Oregon one.

Early in its life, Cover Oregon was given a $48 million “early innovator” grant from the federal government. That amount would later grow to $59 million.

There were a few strings attached.

To keep the money flowing, the website would have to hit specific benchmarks between 2011 and 2013. The state needed to show the feds it had picked a company to provide software and technical assistance; it had to demonstrate that the website was safe from hackers; and, most importantly, it had to show that people could actually sign up for insurance on the website.

Either the Obama Administration dropped the ball over and over and over again – or it simply allowed a fellow Democrat to run wild with hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.

Thankfully, not everyone in Washington is quite so comfortable with this.